Achieving Project Management Success in the Federal Government

Chapter 14  

Implementing KnowledgeManagement Practices:Reusing the Wheel

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.

—ROGER C. SCHANK, cognitive scientist¹

Over the decades, the space shuttle program has leveraged repeatable processes while implementing new technologies and materials. Today’s shuttle missions are very different from those of the 1980s in terms of technologies and types of missions, yet they still have to obey the laws of physics and gravity while launching and landing a shuttle. To accomplish these miracles of human ingenuity, NASA must mobilize massive amounts of knowledge for each flight—including design documents, operational procedures, safety plans, quality assurance ...